Forbidden, part 2 (and once again, ooh-la-la)

As I blogged previously, I had to return to Forbidden to complete my shoot-the-dancers assignment for the club's website. A couple of girls still needed photographed, including Natasha, who I'd briefly chatted with during my previous visit. She's quite a memorable-looking girl. For starters, she has pink hair. Vivid, radioactive pink. Second, she has about a bazillion tattoos, including 'Do or not, there is no try' across her chest, and a large scroll of text down one leg.

Last week, after the first shoot, I was idly browsing through Model Mayhem and came across a profile I was very familiar with: Goreckii. A very experienced young model and dancer, with a great portfolio of photos to her name. Great look, long, vivid blue hair... several piercings...

"tattoos - a full paragraph of the Declation of Abroath on the side of my right leg from hip to knee...'Do or not, there is no try' along my chest..."

Eh ?! Wot ?! Natasha is Goreckii ?!?!

It was embarrassing to think I hadn't spotted who she was, especially since her Purestorm profile uses her real name. Nevertheless, I couldn't believe my luck: I was going to get a free shooting session with Goreckii, even if I didn't want to get my hopes up because of the constraining circumstances of the gig. So we did some quick test shots, then moved to the dancers' pole where she assured me she'd be able to show off some good moves.

Holy cow! This girl was fantastic, striking effortless poses in apparent defiance of gravity, and holding them until I could get the shot. And then it got even better! Before we finished, she asked if she could do some more static posing next to the pole. We did that, and I dimmed the lights a little to try and get a darker and more edgy look to the images. When I showed them to her, she raved! If things stayed quiet, she asked, would it be ok for her to come back later, and we could do some arty nude/topless stuff, just for us? I kid you not.

And I kid you not about what happened next: nothing, because I left and went home. I know what you're thinking. But I'd been paid, the club was getting a busy, there were three other mini-shoots I'd have to complete before I could get any one-on-one time with her, and it had been about nine hours since I'd eaten anything so I was staaaaaaaaaaaarving.

Still, you're right of course: Dumbest. Move. Ever. I've kicked myself every day since for not hanging around. Even if I'd had to wait six hours until the club was closed, she would have been worth it. I'm going to try and organize something between us in the new year, but it won't be the same; this was one of those spontaneous, carpe diem moments that you either grab with both hands, or lose forever.

Forbidden (ooh-la-la)

Thanks to a contact-on-the-inside, I was able to get a gig as photographer for Forbidden, the lapdancing club in Glasgow's Maxwell Street, so they could update their website with pictures of girls who actually work for them.

This shoot was originally planned for a few months ago, but various logistical difficulties prevented it happening then. However, at the end of last month I got chased up for it, and I decided what the hell, my 40th birthday was approaching, and it would probably cheer me up a bit to spend several hours taking pictures of scantily-clad young ladies gyrating round a pole; think of it as a wee present to myself.

And it worked a treat! Despite the "challenging" conditions (extremely poor light, and blaring music which made communications with the girls very difficult during each shoot) things went very well. I ended up with over a dozen pictures which will hopefully end up on the club's website, and lifted my spirits a little bit from the middle-aged gloom they were in, albeit temporarily.

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to complete the assignment before punters started arriving and I had to pack up my kit. So I volunteered to come back next Saturday and finish the job. How big-hearted am I, eh?

To be honest, I'm not really the type for places like this. I'd never even been in a lapdancing club before Saturday, and the shoot hasn't changed my mind. However, I would like to say that the girls were charming, polite, hard-working, and very professional throughout, and it was a pleasure to work with them.

You dirty old man

I've always been a bit lazy with the content filters on Flickr, for two reasons:

(i) the internet is full of explicit porn... in case you hadn't noticed. If you're worried about your kid seeing photos which contain mind-warping atrocities like a woman's nipple, then your best bet is probably to keep him away from a computer, full stop.
(ii) Flickr doesn't allow you to set a filter up before you upload images.* So even if you're quick and well-intentioned, you can't help but corrupt some poor innocents during that brief window between your shots becoming visible on the site, and you getting to the page that allows you to adjust the various settings. My personal record was 25 views on an image in the few seconds before I could lock it down, which frankly was a compelling motivation to not self-censor.

(* I now think this isn't true, but as a function it's hidden away somewhere, and you have to go looking for it. Which is almost as dumb as not having it at all)

Anyhoo, someone at Flickr finally noticed that a few of my pics weren't 100% kiddie-friendly, and reset the permissions on them to "moderate". Hey-ho, that's the way the cookie crumbles. I think I got lucky; I've heard stories of entire accounts being marked as restricted on the basis of one complaint about a single shot. Clicking on my own "nude" tag reveals 24 shots, and only five were moderated, so I can't complain.

However, what amuses and perplexes me is the randomness of the censorship. Of the two below, the top image was restricted, the bottom one left unfettered:



For a while I wondered if it was something to do with the pubic area. In the case of the two black & white bodyscapes, if the model had a fluffy ladygarden it would be visible in the top shot, but possibly not in the bottom one. Then again, both this shot and this one have her bajingo visible, and neither was censored.

Furthmore, both pictures of Karen1985 (below) show her foo-foo. Well, just about. In the largest versions. If you squint. Yet while the colour shot on the left was moderated, the black & white version wasn't:



No clue about those two at all. They're right next to each other in my photostream, are in pretty much the same groups, etc. Is there some kind of complex formula involved? Or was a Flickr staffer halfway through censoring me on a Friday afternoon when it came time to go home, and he never finished the job when he returned on Monday morning?

Addendum: Following an alleged complaint, my entire photostream was moderated in early December. Only took a couple of hours to resolve things, and their actions this time round made more sense; a bit heavy-handed given that nude images comprise only 5% of my stream, but not unexpected given Flickr's history in this kind of thing. I've marked everything as moderate that needs to be, although I think I'll have a second look at some of them; interpreting the big F's filtering instructions literally, I think I'm entitled to disable my self-censorship when nothing incriminating (e.g. breast, buttock) is actually visible.